


Closing the Triangle

by Isis



Category: Lord John Grey - Diana Gabaldon, Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Multi, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-29
Updated: 2010-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:53:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is one leg of the triangle still untested.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closing the Triangle

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Age of Sail kink meme](http://age-of-sail.dreamwidth.org/31366.html) to the prompt, "Claire likes to watch." Spoilers for An Echo in the Bone.

I had been waiting impatiently for the discussion to end. Yes, it was important for Jamie to pass on the details of what he had seen during his impromptu and accidental spying expedition. The rational part of me knew that. But Jamie had no sooner been raised from the dead, as it had seemed to me, than John had spirited him away, and although I now knew what had happened – or at least I had been told the barest details, enough to keep me from breaking down the door of the back room of the inn and dragging my husband away, at any rate – I was anxious to give him the homecoming that he deserved and that we both needed. 

Finally the door to the inn's back room opened, and Jamie strode out. His eyes found mine, and with a nod to the men behind him he came over to me. 

"Are you quite done for the evening?" My voice came out sounding more peevish than I had intended, but Jamie only laughed.

"Done with them, aye. Not done with you, Sassenach." 

I couldn't help but smile as Jamie's arm came around me and swept me towards the stairs to our room. But as he shepherded me through the door and we tumbled onto the bed, a pang of guilt shot through me. Jamie must have seen my expression change, because his hands abruptly stilled on my shoulders. "Are ye all right?"

I took a deep breath. "While you were gone. I didn't get the chance to tell you. I – Lord John, I was in trouble, and he –"

"I know, Sassenach. I know." He smiled fondly. "And I gave him my thanks for keeping you safe."

"We got married," I persisted. "I thought – _we_ thought you were dead."

"He did mention that, yes."

I could not believe how even his voice sounded. John must not have told him the entire story. I knew what Jamie was like in his jealousy, when he thought another man had even looked at me sidewise, whether justified or no. I couldn't imagine him calm in the face of –"

"We got married," I said again. "And I – and we –" I made a small, desperate motion with my hand. "He was my husband, and you were – we thought you were –"

"I _know_. He told me, Sassenach. He said, 'I have had carnal knowledge of your wife.' Dinna fash, Sassenach, I don't blame ye in the least." His voice was light, unconcerned. His arms went around me again and he returned to his task of unlacing my dress. 

I stared at him. How could he be so bloody unmoved? 

Just then there was a quick knock at the door. Before we could move to make ourselves more decent, it opened.

Lord John had the grace to look embarrassed. "Oh. I'm sorry. I will come back later, if it suits –"

"Nay, you may as well come in," said Jamie. He stopped undressing me, but did not take his hands from my body. This small display of possessiveness pleased me, but still I wondered, uneasy.

Lord John looked as uneasy as I felt. "You are occupied."

"Claire and I were just talking about you." I sensed rather than saw his wolfish grin, and it dismayed me. I did not completely understand the relationship between these men – good Lord, between my two husbands, I realized, and that made me think of Frank, and what it would have been like had the two of _them_ ever met. Not that John was remotely like Frank, or that our relationship had been like the one he and I had shared. 

Suddenly a thought struck me. Jamie had said he didn't blame me. Despite everything that had happened to him, did he find Lord John…attractive? They had only just returned from several weeks in each other's company. I had thought the desire one-sided. But was it?

My face, ever transparent, must have given me away. John closed the door and advanced toward me, a wry smile on his face. "You have no reason to be jealous, my dear. Much to my regret."

I looked up at Jamie. "And to yours?" Speaking of regret; I regretted my words the instant they were out of my mouth. Jamie had been raped by another man, and although it had happened long ago I knew that the experience still haunted his dreams.

And yet. His eyes held an odd fierceness as he regarded the two of us, John and me. "Strange," he said, almost to himself. He looked at me and smiled. "I know he can't come between us, Sassenach," he said tenderly. John let out a quiet snort, and Jamie turned toward him. "Aye. It's nothing against you, my friend. Maybe it's that I've known you both for a very long time. Close to the same amount of time, in fact." I remembered the brave and brash young English soldier who had thought Jamie had abducted me, and I had to smile as well.

"But it could be I am a wee bit jealous," he continued. "It's a bit disappointing to find I have been replaced by my wife!"

"It wasn't like that at all," I protested.

"It wasnae?" he countered, raising an eyebrow. "Here I am dead, and the two of you are consoling each other."

"We _thought_ you were dead." My words were more acerbic than his. In fact, he sounded almost as though he thought it was all a great joke. But if this was true, why was he even talking about it?

"You were there the whole time," said John quietly, and something caught in my heart. It wasn't a joke to John; somehow he saw the kernel of what Jamie was unable to approach straightforwardly, and he could grasp it with his hands and not shy away. He came to the edge of the bed and looked Jamie in the face. "And yet there is one leg of the triangle still untested. Would you make it complete?"

I closed my eyes, thinking that John must have taken leave of his senses. Jamie and I had long known John's inclinations and his feelings, but he had never acted upon them, never even shown the slightest relaxation of his iron control. He valued Jamie's friendship, I knew, and it was inconceivable – unbelievable – that he would say anything to put that at risk. For surely Jamie would leap up in disgust and dismay, his memories, if nothing else, rising up against John's softly-voiced proposal.

Instead there was a silence, almost palpably thick. I opened my eyes to see that Jamie was looking at me, a question in his gaze. A question I would never have expected to see, let alone to have to answer. It seemed absurd. But I loved both these men, albeit in different ways. And the thought of them together – Jamie's lean, hard body, John's compact energy, red hair and fair hair mingling on the pillow – 

I swallowed hard, then nodded. "It would be only fair."

I heard John's sharp intake of breath, Jamie's slow, controlled exhale. Quietly I slid from the bed, moved to the shadows in the corner. They were looking at each other now, wary animals, but I could see the arousal in their eyes in the candlelight, in Jamie's no less than in John's. What was it that had passed between them on the road in these past weeks? What could have changed the disgust that I knew Jamie had always felt at even the mere idea of intimacy with another man? What pact had been made, what challenge issued, that would be settled now?

Before Lord John had interrupted us, I had begun to undress Jamie. Now it took only a few quick motions of his hands before the remaining clothing slid from his body. He stood there proudly, almost defiantly, his cock not yet erect but not far from it, and I wondered whether it was Lord John's gaze or the thought of me, watching from the shadows, that had aroused him.

"James," whispered Lord John. His hand reached out but stopped short of Jamie's arm. 

"You'd best take that off," said Jamie. The sound of his rough and urgent voice, even directed at someone other than me, sent a thrill down my spine. 

A small smile from Lord John, and he deftly undid his own cravat and waistcoat, placing them on a chair. He bent to remove his boots, then his trousers, which he neatly folded and placed with his other clothing. When he straightened and turned back toward the bed I could see that he was unapologetically aroused, and I noticed Jamie carefully not looking below his chest. I, of course, could look all I wanted, and I did.

"Is there anything particular you would like?" asked Lord John politely. 

"Well," said Jamie. He looked at the ground.

"Would you like my arse?"

Jamie gulped audibly. I almost wanted to laugh. And yet – hearing that offer, in Lord John's cultured tones, did something odd to me. It was almost as though I wanted to act on it myself, to take him in that way. Although of course I couldn't; it was Jamie who would have to do it for me, if indeed it was something he could bring himself to do at all.

John was looking at him, and I could see the cautious longing in his expression. As though he was being presented with all he had ever wanted, but feared that it was a mirage that would vanish when he reached out to grasp it. I understood completely. I half expected Jamie to throw something at him and leap under the bed. Then:

"Yes." It was barely a whisper. I almost thought I was imagining it, but John had heard it more clearly, and a thousand complex emotions whirled across his face. Then, he smiled.

"It is yours," he said, and stepped close to Jamie and enclosed him in his arms. I expected Jamie to flinch, but his arms went around John's back and he returned the embrace, stiffly but definitely. 

John stroked his back and sides, his hands playing gently across the scars, curving around his hip, then moving across his groin before sliding up his chest. Jamie jerked once in surprise, then settled, allowing John's touches, gradually softening to them. That is, most of his body softened; one part, at least, appeared to be doing the opposite, or at least, so it seemed from the glimpses I caught of it. But the distance between their bodies had decreased, and now they were pressing against each other, Jamie's hands gripping John's arse more tightly than I imagined could be comfortable, John's hands roaming ever more confidently.

John tilted his head and shoulders up – he was so much shorter than Jamie, although of course everybody was – and kissed him on the lips so quickly that Jamie had no chance to respond, then slid out from his arms and stretched himself onto the bed. "I am yours," he said, more quietly, and Jamie might not have heard him, but I did.

Jamie stood by the side of the bed, his hand tentatively stroking down the length of John's back to the curve of his waist. John shifted on the bed, moving his leg aside, pushing back up into Jamie's hand. The candlelight played on their bodies, and I watched, entranced. I could feel the yearning building in my own body, and when I slipped a hand beneath my skirt I felt moisture there.

John made an encouraging murmur and Jamie stilled, looking slightly panicked. He lifted his head and looked at me, and I caught my breath. I had thought – well, perhaps I had hoped – that they had forgotten about me. Then I saw the question in his eyes, and I nodded. I was tempted to give him my hand, give him the wetness from my body, but that might have distracted him. Or at least, I would have hoped it would. Instead I stepped quietly to my chest of things and drew out the aloe salve base; that would do. Jamie looked helplessly at me when I held it out to him, so I opened the lid and scooped out a small portion. I wondered whether he would smell my juices mingling with the aloe.

When the salve had warmed in my hand, I stroked it gently onto and into John's body, which opened to my touch. If he knew it was my hand rather than Jamie's, he gave no sign. Then I grasped Jamie's hard cock and gave it a few strokes as well, until it glistened in the candlelight. 

Jamie's eyes had closed when I touched him, and when I withdrew he opened them again. He looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back; then I melted back to my spot in the darkness. Awkwardly he climbed onto the bed and straddled John, who murmured again and met his weight with his own movements. 

A groan; a moan; the whisper of two bodies, twining together. I knew both of those bodies, had heard each of those voices moan into my own ear, but seeing them together was something entirely new, entirely different. My hand moved under my skirts of its own volition. They were closing the triangle, and I was transfixed. 

Jamie's grunts turned into the familiar gasping cry of his completion. John's was quieter, and although I had heard it only a handful of times it was no less familiar. The third cry took me by surprise. It was mine.

Any hope I had that it had been muffled in their own noises dissolved when they both turned their heads toward my dark corner. "Ye may as well come out, Sassenach," said Jamie.

"Please," said John, a little breathlessly.

I rose, and went to the bed, and they opened their arms and took me in.


End file.
